Caffe Lena — Time is relative to The Stony Creek Band

SARATOGA SPRINGS >> Dave Maswick jokes that he’s the new kid in the Stony Creek Band. He’s only been with them for 33 years. On Sunday afternoon, the group celebrates its 40th anniversary at Caffè Lena.

Founding member, guitarist and singer John Strong is proud of the fact that this rustic band — that’s electric — also features a mandolin and has been packing the caffè since the first time they played there. “We brought down the whole town of Stony Creek. When we first started playing, we were just very popular. We had it going.”

Strong remembers clearly the rainy day in the mid-’70s when they first approached Lena Spencer. “It wasn’t at Lena’s. She was at her apartment upstairs on Broadway, and we just rang the door bell. She was looking down the stairs at three wet young guys. She hired us on the spot.”

The groups’ website contains a biography of the band by noted Adirondack singer Chris Shaw, who defines their sound as “a purely distilled essence of the Adirondacks — that special mixture of Quebec fiddle tunes, lumberjack ballads and postwar country-swing — that can be heard on all the albums of the genre’s more recent exponents.”

On their website, the date of the posted article is 1998. Strong thinks it actually dates back to the ’70s. Time kind of gets lost with the group. And so does any clear definition of who they are.

“We just happen to live in the Adirondacks,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s such an Adirondack influence.” He recalls submitting material to Rounder Records, the largest roots music label.

“We submitted stuff to them because I thought it would fit. It’s funny. Our music has never been a clean fit for anyone. As much as people like us, it’s so hard to describe the genre ’cause it crosses over,” Strong says.

When I suggest that they may be the Grateful Dead with an Adirondack accent, Strong says his co-founder and best friend, guitarist Hank Soto, doesn’t like the Grateful Dead. “I’m fine with the Grateful Dead, (but) I’m not so fine with every band that they’ve spawned.”

Strong grew up on folk artist Tom Rush and attended coffeehouse shows at Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania. Listen to the band’s “Crow Black Chicken” and you hear a laid back Little Feat flavor. They also cover “I Know You Rider,” but its origins may not be where you first heard it.

“That’s one of the first songs I learned as a kid, and I always thought it was my song,” Strong says. “Not that I wrote it, but I have the property on this thing. I still love that song. There’s five chords in there. That’s a lot of chords for a kid to learn.”

Strong says the secret to the band’s longevity is the strong friendship of the people in the band, especially between him and Soto. As for the Adirondack musical heritage, that may be a stretch. “You know the folk greats throughout the Adirondacks — Berggren. Chris Shaw and all those guys. They do a great job keeping the traditional music handed down from the French and British Isles and stuff, down through Canada and down into the Adirondacks, the logging companies. They play music every Saturday night.

“That’s not really us, although we were a little part of it because at the Stony Creek Inn, when we were living there way back in the ’70s, if we didn’t have a Saturday night gig with the band, we had a gig because we’d be playing bass or guitar just sitting in with the square dance band. So that’s definitely the Adirondack tie for us. But I think when I talk about music, we don’t do the Eagles. We’re not a cover band. The songs in our repertoire are just a lot of original stuff still, and then there’s our obscure stuff. That’s not to say we don’t do ‘Friend of The Devil’ now and again.”

Stony Creek Band 40th anniversary

When: 3 p.m. Sunday

Where: Caffè Lena, 47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs

Tickets: $15 general; $12 members and $7.50 students and seniors at the door or call (518) 583-0022